Board of Governors Nominations 2006/2007 — Priority 7, Nothing Accomplished
Another year has gone by and once again the Nominating Committee of Scouts Canada has shirked its responsibility both to the Voting-members and to the membership at large. They have again created a management slate consisting of just enough nominees to fill the vacancies. Once again the Voting members are a mere rubber stamp. What choice do they have, vote for the slate or vote down the slate. They are not permitted to judge the actual available candidates.
The nominating committee effectively controls who will be on the Board of Governors. This is Father Knows Best at its worst.
The Board of Governors is selected by a closed loop process. The time and energy required to put forward a candidate is not worth the trouble. Last year we managed to put forward a candidate who was eminently qualified. What we learned was that the possibility that a person whose name is put forward through the alternate process has no real chance of being elected. It only went to prove that the process was to no avail.
The whole process is, in any event, contrary to the fundamental principles of Scouting. Scouts Canada has taken no serious steps to institute a democratic process at any level of the organization. If anything there has been an intensification of the top down command structure. The page in the old BP&P which showed the inverted pyramid, with youth at the top, has been ripped out of the By-Laws. The Ordinary-member who, according to WOSM Principles, is to be a part owner and stakeholder in the organization has been stripped of his or her ownership and stakeholding.
The underlying documents, the Royal Charter of 1912 and the Federal Statute of 1914, that create the body corporate gave legal existence to an Association, to a body consisting of it members. Scouts Canada management, both Volunteer and Employed, have perverted the use of the word "corporation" and perverted the meaning of "classes of member" in order to usurp the interest of the majority and place that interest into the hands of a body, namely the Board of Governors, that has no accountability whatsoever to the membership.
It is time that the members of the Board of Governors began to take their fiduciary responsibilities seriously and take steps to enfranchise the members. We need Scout-ing not Scout-INC.